I was (probably rightly,) chided for not marking the passing of a member of my own family. My Aunt Antonia was not known for being congenial, convivial, or con-much-of-anything-else. Mostly, she was tough. Her and my Aunt Frances (who's 93,) were pretty much the oldest surviving members of my immediate family. Fran is still surviving, Antonia passed last week, and both survived the passing of their husbands by 25 years at least. My dad's other brothers all pretty much passed at the age of 75 on the nose. He's lucky; kind of. I mean, yes, he's surviving, but he doesn't realize that my daughters are not his daughter, at this point. I've batted it around if this is really a life well lived, when that's the case, but that's neither here nor there. The sands of my father's generation are slowly, but most certainly, slipping away. What then? Is it really that long at that point before my number's up? Yeah, there's still a ways to go before that's really the case, and much life to be lived, but Hell's bells, my oldest daughter will be 14 next month! Even in a relatively right circumstance, that's less than 10 years before she could be a parent herself! I still remember stories from her toddler-hood like they happened yesterday. Now she can sit someplace and amuse herself checking out boys. My threat now is that if she checks a guy out, and I happen to see him in the course of subbing, I'll mention her sentiments to him. She claims this is blackmail; going for the reaction is more like it, really. And by that, yeah, I can see where she gets it from. But getting back to Antonia, (and hopefully tying this little treatise together,) given that her grandchildren numbered to a total that would staff an auxiliary to the Grand Army of Monaco, a life is measured in what you have known, I believe. It's very much about those who know you, and love you. What you have survived is essentially secondary. Long may it be so.